There has been a lot more work going on since my last post. Our attic is now boarded out and we’ve put some boxes up there for storage and it’s even got light and power! We also have gone and bought ourselves a media unit for the television from John Lewis (since getting rid of our fireplace it had been on the floor).

Charlie (the cat) can finally relax now that a lot of the noise has stopped.

Most excitingly (in my opinion) is the fact that we have now got our new oak windowsills in place. I can’t show you a picture yet though because we’re too scared to uncover them before we get them varnished – but I can assure you that they look good (even if they don’t really go with the strange green colour in the box room -ahem- study).

Our electrician has been around again and had a few bad days at our house, apparently our walls are quite solid and he broke his drill and it turns out – surprise, surprise – that our house isn’t wired up very well so I think a lot of faffing was involved. Thankfully all of the new sockets are in place now and all he has left to do for the moment is to install a new consumer unit under the stairs and test it all for us.

My other half was taking some pictures as our electrician was working the other day and the electrician asked if there was something wrong, he didn’t really believe Paul when he told him that I have a blog and that’s what the pictures were for. Sorry Andrew!

There has even been a lot of activity in the garden! Yesterday (19th July) my parents came around to help us lug some of our many rubble sacks to the dump and to help us finally erect our shed!

It is £2.00 a bag to dump bricks and rubble and £3.50 a bag to dump plaster. It ended up being quite pricey to get rid of our old fireplace and the mess left behind by the tradesmen.

We went to breakfast first – we needed the energy – and it took three trips to the dump to get rid of the building materials.

We were all set to get the shed done, and whilst my mum and I popped out to re get some money back for some excess materials and buy some gloves, my Dad and Paul started on it. And when we returned the shed was almost fully erected, however, it transpired that Shire (the shed manufacturer) didn’t send us all of the required parts to make a shed (we were meant to have received them but they just hadn’t been put in that shed pack). This means that we have a shed without a roof, window frame and lots of the finishing touches.

I might have found it funny had it not been the second shed they’d had to send us after the first one broke en route. We’ve had to leave it half finished whilst my other half chases them up (has a shout at them). It’s all wrapped up in tarpaulin like a big present now, and luckily we did because even though it was lovely weather yesterday, it’s rained this morning.

So instead of completing this job, we moved onto another: the garden. I don’t like any of the plants in our garden, bar the roses (and the ones we brought with us). We all started to rid the garden of unwanted plants, we even got rid of one of the trees and it’s created so much more space. It took about 8/9 trips to the dump but the difference is immense.

It’s now flying ant season. Last week (or possibly the week before) we decided to tackle the ant problem before they started flying and we lifted most of our slabs and under each one was thousands of ants, more than I’d ever seen. We’d found three separate colonies under the first five slabs. After sprinkling a lot of ant killer, I’m pleased to confirm that when we had a quick look under a couple slabs yesterday there was not a trace of an ant colony, just hundreds of woodlice instead. But there are definitely more ants under the slabs we didn’t get to.

But all of these insects mean that we have been attracting a lot of the local bird population. Starlings, especially, have been descending upon the street in the last week and catching all the flying ants that have been getting away.

They’ve also spent a lot of their time squabbling over the bird food that we left out for the blue tit. Most of these encounters turn into an all out brawl.

Special thanks to my mum who made our day by falling into the sack of garden waste!  Love you mum! 😀